


Jonathan

by AlterEgon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Gen, Scene from the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 16:53:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14140365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: Years ago, the Lightwoods were asked to take in the son of Robert's parabatai, recently deceased, and raise him with their own children. Of course they agreed. As it turns out, their new foster son is not quite what they expected.A brief glance at Jace's arrival in the Lightwood household, and how it may have happened that Maryse came up with the nickname "Jace."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Winds of Change 3: Cyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14093397) by [AlterEgon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon). 



In the end, no matter how much he appeared for all the world like a miniature adult, he was a ten-year-old boy – and a ten-year-old boy who had just had an exhausting day.

He must have been asleep the moment his head touched the pillow. He certainly was deeply asleep when Maryse came into the room to check on him.

The boy didn't stir as she approached, didn't tense as she reached out to run a hand lightly over his hair. It wasn't so much a matter of stroking an errant lock from his forehead – his hair wasn't long enough for any errant locks to appear. It was more that she took the chance sleep gave her to offer him a little of the comfort he wouldn't accept while awake.

His sleeping form didn't flinch from her touch, a fact she found reassuring.

They hadn't hesitated a second when they'd been informed that Robert's _parabatai_ had died – a fact that had gone entirely past him because of the way their bond had dissolved over years of estrangement without contact – and a place needed to be found for his son.

She wasn't sure what she had expected the child to be like. A younger version of Michael Wayland, maybe? He did have Michael's confidence and self-assurance, sure enough. That was where similarities ended.

Jonathan's transfer to New York had been sped up, sending him a day early because the people who had taken charge of his placement wanted him safely in a family as soon as possible. Wanted him in a safe family as soon as possible.

They'd been asked for a meeting beforehand. That was when they'd been shown the boy's medical report.

After he had shown up in Alicante, running most of the way from the remote Wayland Manor to report the attack on his father and his subsequent death, he had, of course, been looked over by a Silent Brother – both to make sure he wasn't hiding any injury of his own, and because the men who had attacked and murdered his father had worn the circle rune clearly visible on their necks. Who knew what kind of curse they might have left on the boy?

The results of a thorough scan permitted one of several conclusions: Jonathan Wayland was either incredibly clumsy, incredibly reckless, or the victim of abuse. At the age of ten, his little body showed more evidence of healed fractures and other injuries than those of many adults on field duty.

He denied getting into accidents a lot, insisted he didn't hurt himself in training more often than usual – though how a child who had never had a sparring partner other than his own father was supposed to know what was usual was beyond Maryse – and didn't seem to understand the concept of abuse.

Robert had settled on his preferred solution as soon as he had read the scan. His face had paled a fraction. His words had been low enough that only Maryse, standing right next to him, had heard them: "What have you done, Michael?"

"He wasn't the Michael Wayland we knew anymore," he had told Maryse later, when they'd talked about it, when she'd asked him if he really thought the man they had grown up with was capable of such violence towards a child.

She'd been willing to concede his point, but actually meeting Jonathan had returned her to a state of uncertainty.

She had seen victims of abuse before. She'd known Céline Montclair, later Herondale, from their time with Valentine. She couldn't reconcile the self-assured, confident manner of the boy who had walked through the portal, unaccompanied, carrying a bag over his shoulder and a backpack in his hand, with that memory.

Looking around the room, she found herself shaking her head. It looked the same it had that morning, except that there was now a sleeping child in it. Jonathan had put his things away neatly and efficiently without being prompted, before he had asked if he could go and explore the institute. Nevertheless, there was nothing in the room that suggested that it now had a permanent occupant.

With the exception of a very few books, everything he had brought had been either clothes, weapons or exercise equipment. Asked if he knew when the rest of his things would be sent, he had given her an uncomprehending look.

He had brought his things. All his things.

He was ten years old, and if she believed his words, he owned not a single toy, no keepsake from when he was little, nothing to remind him of the mother who had died too young for him to remember her, no sentimental object given to him by the father who had raised him.

All that he had brought with him had disappeared into the room's closets and wardrobe, leaving the result as bare and impersonal as it had been.

Maryse regretted that they had decided against preparing the room as they had briefly considered, marking it as clearly belonging to a family member, rather than a guest. They'd wanted Jonathan to be able to feel at home there with his things, not the things they imposed on him.

They hadn't known that such things didn't seem to exist.

With a sigh, she thought of her own children's rooms. While Alec's was not exactly cluttered, there was always a risk that one might step on something if entering carelessly or without a Nyx rune on at night. He wasn't downright messy with his things, but he rarely bothered to put everything away that he had used.

Izzy's room was another matter altogether, with books and tools and practice weapons all over the place, generously interspersed with the less martial objects she found herself interested in. She was careful to put her more fragile possessions and better clothes away to protect them from damage caused by her other pursuits, but that was as far as her willingness to tidy up anything went.

Recently, Maryse had found herself wondering how long it would take before she would unexpectedly step onto half a frog or something similarly pleasant. Following up some classes on the anatomy of Seelie – meant to introduce the children to their most vulnerable spots –, her daughter had taken an immense interest in what was inside things. Or, more specifically: what was inside various creatures.

She'd been spending time in the labs recently, trying to watch the forensic work, until someone had told her if she wanted to cut open any kind of larger creature, she had to  practice on smaller, simpler things first, so as not to damage anything and ruin the specimen.

So far, she had kept her attempts at dissection in the labs, but knowing her daughter, Maryse knew it was only a matter of time until she would set up a work station in her room and expand her activities there.

At least it was leading to a skill she would be able to put to use later. Her skill with a scalpel was improving steadily, and her drawings of animal insides were almost eerily detailed already. If she kept this up, she would become an outstanding forensic pathologist, and an asset to every institute for more than just her fighting skills and her accumulated knowledge on weaponry.

What was Jonathan interested in?

That had been another question that had led her nowhere. Marital arts, he had said. Acrobatics. Fighting. She knew he played the piano, though knowing what the bones of his fingers looked like, she couldn't imagine he'd be playing well, or found much enjoyment in it. Recently broken or healing fingers wouldn't make for a very good experience, or efficient lessons.

He had read a lot, and much of it beyond the reading she would have expected at his age, if the titles he had rattled off when she had asked him about which books he enjoyed were any indication.

"Do you read those for fun?" She had asked him.

"They were on my list," he had answered, frowning once again as if she had said something confusing.

"What are we going to do with you, Jonathan?" Maryse asked into the silence as she straightened his blankets and tucked him in as she would Alec or Isabelle. "How do we make you feel at home here?"


	2. Chapter 2

"You could try to be a little nicer to people," Alec suggested.

Jonathan looked at him, one eyebrow raised. "Oh? How do you nicely defeat someone hand to hand?"

"You could start by not gloating as much when you win," the older boy suggested.

They were sitting together in the Lightwoods' living room, talking about the day's sparring session. Maryse had made herself comfortable in an armchair, pretending to read while she watched the children.

Whatever shortcomings Michael Wayland had had as a father, he had certainly taught his son to fight. Jonathan was far ahead of any children his age in the institute. Alec and Izzy were catching up quickly, though. Jonathan was generous in sharing his abilities with them and they spent hours and hours together in extra sessions, honing their skills.

It also wasn't that Jonathan didn't know how to take defeat gracefully. Whenever he did lose against one of his new adoptive siblings, he would commend them on a battle well fought. Every time Hodge Starkweather sent him to the floor or held a practice blade to his throat, he wanted to know exactly where he had gone wrong.

He also wasn't, as Alec put it, downright _gloating_ when he won, but he did have a certain air of superiority that did not sit well with many of the others, and some of the older boys and girls felt insulted when it became clear that he had never expected to lose against someone who was a head and a half taller than him, and took his victory as no more than he was due.

One thing he seemed to never quite be able to wrap his mind around was that not everyone was willing to dedicate all their day to learning and improving. He'd asked for his study and training schedule the second day in the institute, and returned after a few minutes, pointing out that a mistake must have happened, and that it was incomplete.

His confusion had been caused by the "blank spots" that spelled free time. Apparently, his father had organized his entire day, stuffing it with chores, training and studies from dawn to dusk – or rather, from the moment he got up to the time he went to bed, with brief interruptions for meals.

No matter how much Maryse tried to understand the purpose behind that as giving him the best preparation for the dangerous lives they led, and no matter how much she tried to see the good behind it – for one thing, the fact that Jonathan left his bed accurately made before coming to breakfast every morning and never left as much as a single towel on the bathroom floor had led to Alec at least making an honest effort at making his own bed and reduced the number of towels everyone else left lying around wet and bunched up – she continued to find Wayland's manner of raising his son wanting.

It was evident in so many little things. Where Alec and Izzy picked their reading material outside of lessons to suit their tastes, Jonathan was still dutifully working through the assigned reading list he had memorized.

One night, when Robert had suggested that he might like to play some music for them, Jonathan had risen, his posture very formal, walked to the piano and sat down to play. Maryse had had to correct her initial expectations: the boy played beautifully and well above the level that could be expected for his age – just like he seemed to do everything else.

There was no doubt, however, that he had taken Robert's question as a command, just like he did everything that any of the adults said to him. He wasn't subservient or timid by any definition of the words, but it was impossible to miss that he had already been drilled into a near-perfect soldier, taking every command without consideration for his own wishes and fulfilling it to the best of his abilities.

It frightened her sometimes.

During his first days in the institute, Jonathan had been completely and utterly confused by quite a few things – and not only the vast amount of free time everyone had, while still often complaining that it was too little.

It was clear to anyone watching that whenever he made a mistake in an assignment – and he didn't make many – he expected punishment. Simply being corrected or shown how to do it right was an unfamiliar concept to him.

He wasn't _afraid_ of punishment, but he expected it as a matter of course: an unavoidable consequence of not being perfect.

He'd gone as far as to tell them that they didn't need to coddle him because of his father's death. That he would rather be treated normally than to have everyone step lightly around him.

They hadn't been doing that, and it hadn't been until Maryse had overheard the boys talking about the subject that she had found just what Jonathan considered normal behavior from a teacher. That day she had learned, to her complete and utter horror, that where Jonathan had grown up, the punishment for small mistakes was having an accordingly small bone broken. A finger for a key missed on the piano. Disregarding the recommendation to not overdo use of the _iratze_ , lest the body develop a resistance to it, Michael would then heal him and have him start over.

She hated to admit it, but Robert was right: the Michael Wayland who had raised Jonathan was not the man they had known.

"But I don't like him," Jonathan was saying presently, contradicting whatever Alec had suggested just before. Maryse found that she had missed part of their conversation over her thoughts.

"For one thing, he keeps calling me Jonny."

"You must admit that Jonathan is a little long," Alec told him. "Imagine if everyone called me Alexander all the time… that's a mouthful. And how would I know when Mom or Dad are getting really angry with me if they didn't keep my full name for that?"

Maryse hid a grin at those words.

"I don't want to be called Jonny," Jonathan said. "Or Jon either. I don't like those."

Her thoughts were going down a different track. Might it be that a new name could actually help Jonathan settle into his new life with them?

"Is there anything else you would like to be called?" she asked him.

He shrugged, less surprised than the other two that she had been listening. "Never thought about it," he admitted. "I've always just been Jonathan."

"What can you make of Jonathan other than Jon and Jonny?" Alec asked, visibly thinking hard about it already.

Maryse had to admit that that might be a difficult task to solve. "Maybe we could use your middle name for that," she suggested.

"Christopher?" Jonathan looked at her wide-eyed. "But that's just as long as Jonathan is. And 'Chris' is not happening."

"When we were younger, we had a friend who went by his initials," Maryse noted. "He didn't like abbreviations either."

"J. C.?" Jonathan asked, frowning.

"Jaycee… maybe not," Maryse admitted. "Anyone who knows what the mundanes use that for will just find it funny and you'd never hear the end of that. Hmm. Jayssss..."She said it slowly, mentally trying to fit different endings to it.

"Jace?" Jonathan said, trying the sound of it.

Maryse rethought her approach. Why add anything to it at all? It sounded like a perfectly good name on its own.

"I like Jace," Alec declared. "Suits you."

"I don't know about that," the other boy admitted. "But I can probably grow into it."


End file.
